updated 06:35 pm EST, Thu December 29, 2011

GoDaddy makes clear it loses customers over SOPA

GoDaddy sent a statement to the media in an attempt to step the loss of customers by hardening its reversal on SOPA. Where before it just stopped endorsing the contentious anti-piracy act, it now "opposes" the bill. The bill "has not fulfilled its basic requirement" of getting both technology companies and the community onside, it said.

The domain registrar also admitted that it was losing customers. Transfers were at "above normal rates," GoDaddy chief Warren Adelman said. He didn't expect an immediate recovery, but he did hope to get customers back "over time."

Choosing to openly resist SOPA stands in stark contrast to the original full endorsement of the bill. Unusually for a company whose existence depends on safe harbor protection, it backed the proposed law even though it would let music labels and movie studios order an entire site taken down if even a small piece of that site had illegal content by accident. Endorsing SOPA would imply that GoDaddy would cooperate in having sites blocked, even if they were hosted outside of the US.

Among the major domains jumping ship from GoDaddy have been Destructoid, I Can Haz Cheezburger and nearly 1,000 related domains, and Wikipedia.